Author: Joe Iovino

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As many focus on their health in a new year, Kathleen Griffith reminds us to have a holistic approach—body, mind and spirit.

“When one is unwell, one’s whole being is affected,” explains the interim Global Health Team Lead and the Program Manager of Maternal, Newborn and Child Health with the General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church. “We are such integrated beings.”

Griffith also shares how the Abundant Health Initiative of the UMC’s audacious goal of reaching one million children with lifesaving intervention was reached in the fall of 2020.

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We continue our Advent 2020 missionary conversations with Temba Nkomozepi, a United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries missionary serving as an agriculturalist for the Mujila Falls Agriculture Center in Kanyama, Zambia. Temba helps provide healthy, nutritious food, and teaches others how to best grow crops and maintain livestock. It’s important work that helps improve the health of the people of Zambia.

Hear the rest of our 2020 Give Love missionary episodes.

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Our second missionary conversation for Advent 2020 is with Lily Maijama’a, a Global Missions Fellow with the General Board of Global Ministries serving the West Africa Initiative of Liberia where he serves as a project manager. But Lily’s service goes far beyond his office job.

He trains young people in the dangers of the internet and might organize a football match (what we in the U.S. call soccer) just to meet people and invite them into a small group. A passion for connecting people to one another and to Jesus Christ, drives him. Hear how he began to understand his skills for church leadership and how he uses them to reach out to those who are not yet part of the church.

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We begin our missionary conversations for Advent 2020 by meeting Ben Lasley, a Global Missions Fellow with the General Board of Global Ministries serving Arch Street United Methodist Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Growing up in North Carolina, Ben was active in his United Methodist church where he developed his relationship with Jesus Christ. In Philadelphia, he serves as a community organizer, coordinating a meal service for those experiencing homelessness and overseeing a community garden.

Ben’s enthusiasm for his work is contagious. He says it helped “activate my faith.” It isn’t always easy. There are many challenges, but when we are willing, God works in and through us.

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Bryce Hillhouse knows the value of education. He worked hard and made his own path. Today, he serves as Development Coordinator at the Lydia Patterson Institute a United Methodist-related and church-supported middle and high school in El Paso, Texas. Through their robust scholarship program, Lydia Patterson provides a quality education to impoverished children in Texas and Mexico.

In this conversation, Bryce shares the value of education, the importance of spiritual formation, and the challenges Lydia Patterson has overcome at the U.S. – Mexico border and through the coronavirus pandemic.

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Energy is one of those things many of us can take for granted. We flip a switch and bring light to a darkened room. Outlets are plentiful where we charge our phones or power a tool. We have refrigerators that keep our food fresh and water heaters to make our showers comfortable. In some places where The United Methodist Church is in mission, however, that is not the case. Hospitals rely on cellphone flashlights. Students struggle to study at night. Vaccines are unable to be stored due to a lack of refrigeration.

So when energy is unreliable or unavailable, our missionaries and disaster relief teams turn to innovative technologies to get the job done.

The Rev. Jenny Phillips, Senior Technical Advisor for Environmental Sustainability at United Methodist Global Ministries, introduces us to some those cool technological advances and shares about the importance of care for creation as we care for others.

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“The length and width of our table determines the depth and breadth of our compassion,” teaches the Rev. Mark Feldmeir. “If we can get folks to the table and stay there, even in the difficult conversations, that compassion grows deeper and wider and allows us to be agents of compassion.”

As the U.S. presidential election nears, we appear to be a divided nation—not only in politics but also in the church. In his new book, A House Divided: Engaging the Issues through the Politics of Compassion, United Methodist pastor, Feldmeir writes, “Americans are not nearly as polarized in their actual convictions as the current political rhetoric suggests.”

In his book, and in this conversation, he encourages and equips us to have constructive conversations on challenging topics like climate change, immigration, and racism. By starting from where we already agree, we can become more comfortable with welcoming differing opinions to the table.

 

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“Maybe the big things in your eyes are actually really small things,” the Rev. Adam Weber wonders aloud, “and the small things in your eyes are actually huge.”

Instead of searching for the big things we want to do for God, Adam encourages us instead to look for the places where we can love our neighbors, even the ones who are difficult to love. He’s learned that lives can be powerfully impacted by simple things like free cookies and basketball hoops.

Adam Weber is the founding pastor of Embrace Church, a multi-site United Methodist congregation in and around Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

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Dr. Leah Gunning Francis describes herself as a seminary dean, mother and author.

As a seminary dean and scholar, she shares a theology of anti-racism and racial justice that begins with the imago dei, the recognition that all human beings are created in the image of God.

As an author, Dr. Gunning Francis wrote Ferguson and Faith after interviewing more than two dozen faith leaders who participated in the protests following the shooting death of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. She shares how people of faith joined the work for racial justice, and how we are called to join as well.

As the parent of two sons, she also shares some insights on how we can raise children to be anti-racist.

This is an important and inspiring conversation.

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In her new book The Way Up is Down, author Marlena Graves shares the example of Jesus, who, “Though he was in the form of God… emptied himself” (Philippians 2:6-7).

In this conversation, Marlena and Joe talk about how all too often we do the opposite—trying to fill ourselves with power, money, comfort and more. Often, despite all our striving, we find that we can never be satisfied. When we surrender those desires and instead allow God to fill us, we can find the peace and satisfaction we desire.